The UNESCO world heritage site, the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, a Beijing suburb, is undergoing a clean up and excavation project. It is the first excavation in 72 years, and its main purpose is to improve the preservation of the site and the relics.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhoukoudian`s management office are running the project. The excavation is taken place at the number 1 spot of the site, which has hidden problems of collapse and rockfall.

Gaoxing, from Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, "The number 1 spot is the core of the Zhoukoudian ruins. It is the symbolic part of the whole site and has the highest scientific research value. It contains the most complete stratum layers and abundant scientific information."

According to Gao Xing, the main purposes of the project are to avoid collapse, take further research and improve the showcase status of the spot. He says the current work is as delicate as embroidery.

As the home of Peking Man, the Zhoukoudian ruins are located at 50 kilometers southwest of downtown Beijing. It is situated at the border of mountains and plains.

Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson first started his explorations of the region in 1918. In December 1929, a Chinese scientist named Pei Wenzhong discovered a complete skull of Peking Man on Dragon Bone Hill, northwest of Zhoukoudian.

Later, archaeologists unearthed about 40 individual fossilized skeletons of Peking Man, male, female, old and young. Zhoukoudian, therefore, became the most common site for human remains with the most abundant fossils in the world from the same period. The discovery pushed the history of Beijing`s civilization back to some 600-thousand years. These fossilized remains prove that Peking Man was a primitive man in a evolutionary process from ancient ape to modern man, and is the ancestor of the Chinese nation.

Editor: Zhao Yanchen | Source: CCTV.com

From http://english.cctv.com/20090626/102117.shtml